High among the concerns of software management are questions of organization and process. While these are reasonable concerns to have, I generally find that paying attention to substance is more productive. If you think of your organization as being like a software factory (a line of thought I generally discourage), this means you should pay more attention to the widgets that come out than the organization of the shop floor.
Process
It is easy to be totally consumed by process, organization and people. Everyone wants to know who's their boss. When there are disputes, who has the deciding vote? Many people want to know their "next step" in the organization, the path to greater responsibility, power and pay. Such concerns tend to be greater in the minds of the people on the upper part of the ladder, not to mention the top, since they usually had to work at getting where they are.
Process and organizational structure are tightly tied. Is QA a separate group with its own head? Or are there QA people as part of each small group of developers? If QA is distributed, what is the reporting structure? This is complicated by the myriad of process fashions that sweep through the industry -- there are literally dozens of them in play at any given time, things like Agile and Extreme, with Lean coming up fast.
Substance
Substance is embodied in the code that is produced. Given a set of general requirements, the substance of what is produced can differ wildly. Suppose you're extending your application to mobile. Do you use HTML 5? How do you bridge to the details of the local device? Do you write in Objective C (the native language for the Apple devices)? How much do you store locally, and how do you communicate with the servers? What about all the Android devices?
And I'm just talking about the simplest questions here. Real substance is contained in the details of how the code is written in the chosen environment. For example, the code can be pretty "straight," it can have loads of parameters, it can be layered to varying extents, it can be driven to varying extents by meta-data, etc. These choices have a huge impact on the outcome.
Process vs. Substance
Dilbert illustrates the point nicely, as he often does. In the cartoon below, the pointy-haired boss focusses, as you would expect, on process. He is concerned about dates and whether Wally has met expectations that have been set, completely ignorant of the substance.
Wally, crafty as ever, claims to have created a disastrous substance. The pointy-haired boss, unable to determine whether Wally's claims about substance are true, and unwilling to risk that they may be true, gives in.
Conclusion
Don't be Wally -- but also don't be the pointy-haired boss. Pay attention to substance. Make it your business to understand it. Your attention will provide an example to your group, telling them what's important to you. Your attention to substance will be like a chef who cares that the diners love the food that comes out of the kitchen, and does so by -- what an idea -- paying attention to the food itself.
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